﻿namespace org.apache.lucene.analysis.payloads
{

	using BytesRef = org.apache.lucene.util.BytesRef;

	/*
	 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
	 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
	 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
	 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
	 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
	 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
	 *
	 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
	 *
	 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
	 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
	 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
	 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
	 * limitations under the License.
	 */


	/// <summary>
	/// Mainly for use with the DelimitedPayloadTokenFilter, converts char buffers to
	/// <seealso cref="BytesRef"/>.
	/// <p/>
	/// NOTE: This interface is subject to change 
	/// 
	/// 
	/// </summary>
	public interface PayloadEncoder
	{

	  BytesRef encode(char[] buffer);

	  /// <summary>
	  /// Convert a char array to a <seealso cref="BytesRef"/> </summary>
	  /// <returns> encoded <seealso cref="BytesRef"/> </returns>
	  BytesRef encode(char[] buffer, int offset, int length);
	}

}